China

Residents of Shanghai and Beijing can now ride the metro and pay for tickets with their China Telecom NFC smartphones. The carrier, which has 183m subscribers, is using Gemalto’s UpTeq multi-tenant NFC SIMs to deploy its secure NFC services.

“Apple Pay has hit bumps in China despite Apple’s efforts to make friends with Alibaba and UnionPay,” Caixin reports. Talks between Apple and the national payments network, which were due to lead to an agreement in March, “have stalled”, the report adds, while Apple still has regulatory hurdles to overcome as “it’s unclear whether the product meets the government’s requirements for a commercial operation”.

Mobile payments platform provider Mozido has acquired Chinese cross-border payment gateway provider PayEase with the aim of introducing its mobile payments and retail marketing solutions into the Chinese market. The move follows the company’s acquisition of mobile commerce specialist CorFire in December 2014 and a US$2.5m investment in SimplyTapp last week.

Chip maker NXP will focus on the “significant” Chinese market for mobile wallets, the firm’s CEO has said, as the company revealed a 40% increase in sales for its emerging ID business in a fourth… More

Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba has invested an undisclosed sum in Israeli start-up Visualead, developer of the “visual” QR code technology adopted by Chinese social media site RenRen in May last year. The companies have also… More

Alipay is making it possible for Chinese tourists to purchase transport passes for Singapore, Thailand and Macau ahead of travel and then collect them by scanning a barcode on their mobile phones at booths and kiosks at their destination. The Alipay Overseas Transportation Card service vends stored value smart cards that can be used to pay for bus rides, subway trips, taxis and other types of local and regional public transportation, Alizila explains.

Android Pay, the mobile payments service being developed by China UnionPay, will use both NFC and fingerprint verification, Want China Times reports. “Android Pay adopts a similar model to Apple’s Apple Pay,” the report explains. “The difference is that there are more partners UnionPay can choose to produce the security recognition modules with and thus UnionPay may have greater influences on users than Apple Pay.”

China UnionPay (CUP) is planning to introduce “Android Pay”, an NFC-based mobile payments service, in the third quarter of 2015, Yicai reports. CUP is in discussion with a number of mobile phone manufacturers to support the service, the article adds, and is working with Lenovo on POS terminal support.

China UnionPay (CUP), the country’s official card payments network, has issued notifications to its member banks to tell them “to avoid working with third-party payment services like Alipay”, Want China Times reports. Alipay now has a 50% market share in China, the report adds, while CUP has an 11.9% share. Apple, which today added CUP cards as a payment option to its App Store, has been reported to be in talks with China UnionPay and also with Alipay about partnering to bring Apple Pay to China.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide has unveiled a mobile keyless entry system that will allow guests to use smartphones to unlock rooms using Bluetooth at 150 hotels around the globe by early 2015. The service will also be available via an Apple Watch app when the new wearable device ships next year, the hotel chain has told NFC World+. More

Chinese online payments giant Alipay demonstrated Alipay Touch, a fingerprint biometric system for its mobile wallet app, at a conference in Beijing earlier this month. AliPay Touch allows users to make mobile payments through Alipay Wallet by swiping their finger, WSJ reports. The company is also working with startup Megvii to add facial recognition technology to the wallet for account creation and verification.

Alibaba-owned online payments giant Alipay’s Alipay Wallet app now has 190 million active users in China who use the solution to shop online via their smartphones, pay bills and pay for public transport. The company handles over 80m transactions daily, of which 45m are mobile transactions, and Alipay has partnered with more than 200 financial institutions.

Samsung’s version of Apple Pay is now live in China, Korea’s Yonhap news agency reports. The phone maker has taken a similar route to Apple by partnering with EMVCo member China UnionPay, which has an installed base of 3.6m contactless POS terminals, for the launch of an NFC payment service for users of its devices. “The tie up with UnionPay, which controls 80% of China’s offline payment market, is expected to give Samsung a head start in the mobile payment sector,” the agency says.

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile network operator, has chosen Gemalto to supply it with NFC-enabled SIMs “to protect consumer credentials used for mobile contactless applications​, starting with mass transit services in Beijing.” The SIMs… More

Tencent’s instant messaging app WeChat can now be used to make payments in the retail stores of nine Chinese merchants including DQ Ice Queen, NUS Pharmacy, Rainbow, One Plus One, Lotus, Good Neighbours, Baby Room, Minsheng Department Store and NUS 365, according to Iamwire. “Whenever they click into the credit card function, there will be a two-dimensional code for scanning and barcode on the screen, respectively,” the report explains.

Chinese mobile device maker Xiaomi has launched the Mi Band, a CNY79 (US$13) wristband that features sensors for health and fitness tracking and can be used to unlock the wearer’s Xiaomi smartphone via BLE. “Future plans for the Mi Band include making it into a personal ID — so it can unlock your door when you come home, or switch on smart appliances and gadgets,” The Next Web reports.